Phainon (Honkai: Star Rail) and King Nibelung (Genshin Impact) - thematic paralels and their possible connection.
I noticed a lot of people pointing out the similarities between Amphoreus and Teyvat, which makes sense since Scepter δ-me13 is supposed to simulate the Universe itself. However, the most obvious one to me is the strong connection between the Dragon King Nibelung (the Primordial Creator god of Teyvat) and Phainon, the Demigod of Worldbearing. In this post, I aim to explain those paralels and even point towards the possibility of them being each other's variants.
Let's start with the aesthetics. In Natlan, we have two murals depicting Nibelung - one of him creating the Three Moon Sisters, and one showing a scene that takes place during the War of Vengance, when the Dragon King brought the Abyss to Teyvat to try and take his planet back from the Celestial Usurpers (the Heavenly Principles). Both of them resemble Phainon and the Flame Reaver respectively, (their motifs, color schemes and eyes) with Nibelung's chest symbol being similar to the one on the Flame Reaver's breast.
Second connection is their role. Nibelung is the Primordial Creator of his world, the god-king that spawned together with Teyvat itself and created everything on it. He was said to be a "kind and gentle king" who greatly cherished his companions (the Seven Sovereigns) and refused to save himself by fleeing when he had the chance for the sake of his people. He is also heavily associated with Light, the Omni (Primordial) element and the Sun.
We can already see some similarities between how Phainon and Nibelung speak about "worldbearing":
"If the tide of oblivion must come, then let my bones be the bulwark that shields this realm"
The Voyager claimed that Nibelung's will "shone more brilliantly than all the civilizations she has ever seen" The name "Phainon" translates to "Shining".
Similarily to how Nibelung refused the Voyager's offer to travel the stars with her out of his love for Teyvat despite it being his only chance to save himself, Phainon refuses to join the Trailblazer to become a Nameless of the Astral Express despite expressing interest in it out of his duty to Amphoreus.
Nibelung's role on Teyvat resembles that of Khaos from Greek Mythology. Khaos was the first primordial god who appeared at the dawn of creation and watched over the world's fate untill that task was relayed to the Three Fates. Nibelung also originally watched over Teyvat's fate, but as he ventured into the sea of stars to find a way to save his planet from the Celestial Usurpers, he passed that role onto the Three Moon Sisters.
(side note: something something the nameless ruler and the nameless hero something something)
Interestingly, "Nibel" means "mist", and Khaos was known to take the form of the mist surrounding the Earth.
Phainon is even more connected to the Greek god Khaos. First of all, that's his actual name. In Chinese, Phainon's full name is Khaoslana, and that's why the Flame Reaver calls him Khaos after their battle in the Vortex of Genesis. The English version shortened it to Khaslana which confused some people during the cutscene.
In the Scepter's logs about the Amphoreus experiment, we find out that during it's early stages, an inorganic lifeform named Chaoz666 commited the first act of Destrutcion in δ-me13's history, which earned the Scepter a gaze from Nanook THEMSELF and ascended it to become a Lord Ravager. Later on, this code was inherited by the same signal in every cycle, for unknown reasons. It also caused the Twelve Factors of the experiment to have the golden blood of the Destruction, bascially resulting in the existence of the Chrysos Heirs.
NeiKos496 (Phainon) in the last inheritor of the Khaos code, and the most advanced version of it's signal since each of the Twelve Factors was evolving alongside the world itself the more cycles it went through. Since he is also set on the Worldbearing Path (as was the previous Khaos who later became Kephale, the Worldbearing Titan, according to the 3.2 Trailblaze Mission), it's easy to draw the connection between the Worldbearing Path and Khaos. δ-me13 used to be the divine corpus of Nous that was created by Rubert II as the prototype Scepter and then abandoned. It's not the creation of Zandar, and Lygus merely found it and used his knowledge to place himself as it's administrator. When it comes to the happenings inside the Scepter he cannot interfere much, especially in the Twelve Signals and their roles. In each new cycle the world of Amphoreus is always (re)created from Kephale's memories, and since it's a part that originates from the Scepter itself that makes them (Khaos/Kephale) the true creator of the world inside the simulation.
After the Heavenly Principles arrived on Teyvat and colonized it, Nibelung sought to take his world back and save his people from the unfathomable cruelty that the Celestial Usurpers bestowed upon them. In order to do so, he left Teyvat and ended up corrupting his own body with Abyssal Power, which ignited his fury. The Dragon King then proceeded to bring the Abyss onto Teyvat, attemtping to break the false sky created by the Usurpers and burn the Irminsul which they used to take control over the world's Ley Lines.
Nibelung's attempt at dethroning the Heavenly Principles and bruning the Irminsul greatly weakened them, to the point they had to create the Gnoses because they could no longer supress the planet's natural order, but at the cost of his body being destroyed. This greatly resembles Phainon breaking into the Scepter's core after his fight with Nanook and halting the development of the Black Tide.
Phainon and Nibelung both are the creator gods of their respective worlds, who hate the very idea of "fate" with burning (heh) passion, but the usurpers of their worlds (Phanes and Lygus) associated with the concept of "Logos" shackled their homelands with it. It was Phanes who invented "fate" on Teyvat after conquering it and becoming it's new god-king (as we know from Neuvillette's character menu stories), and it was Lygus who turned δ-me13 into his experiment after crowning himself it's administrator and switching the endpoint of it's calculations from the Erudition to the Destruction. There are many thematic and symbolic paralels between Lygus and Phanes/the Heavenly Principles, both in their lore and design, but I'm not gonna elaborate on them in this post as it is already too long for Tumblr's liking (might do it some other time if yall would like that though).
There are more things I wish to say about Phainon and Nibelung's connections, but I will stop the post here because unfortunately Tumblr is already limiting it, and I think I should wait for 3.6 to release and either confirm or deny some of my assumptions. If you read this far, thank you! I hope you enjoyed this little nerd out, and if you disagree with my points feel free to (politely) discuss it in the comments/reblogs. And if you do agree and maybe wish to add more, that's also very welcome! I'm just very passionate about the lore, so any addition would be appreacited :]